Features / Music

Five minutes with Big Day Out Creator/Producer/Director, Ken West.

If you haven’t seen Straight Arrows, you are missing out on one of the greatest live performances of your life. Owen Penglis wanders around a Dan Murphy’s carpark explaining to Brendan Telford the fruits of their labour.

BIGSOUND Executive Programmer Graham “Asho” Ashton tells Steve Bell about his vision for the annual industry showcase, and why he’s bored to death hearing about current trends and developments.

“We’ve kind of felt our way through the process... I’m a guitar player who became a bassist. Sam’s roots are in hip hop and now he’s like a pop singer. And Garrett’s a metal dude who’s now a sick keyboard player.”

Five minutes with triple j Assistant Music Director, Nick Findlay.

Sydney garage punks Step-Panther are back from their first stab at international notoriety, something that Stevesie tells Brendan Telford is mightily addictive.

"The amount of support that we’ve got from our fans is out of this world. They’re super loyal which is awesome. It can get pretty emotional to be honest. Just looking down at the front five-to-ten rows of people – it’s pretty crazy to see kids lose their shit."

"We’re actually going to play a private party for someone’s 50th birthday – someone who was very close to the band... That sort of led to us thinking, ‘Well, we’re all going to be in Brisbane that weekend, maybe we should do a gig on the Saturday night?’"

“I believe we have a long way to go as musicians, but I think the reasons why people are starting to gravitate towards us and other bands like us is because of our focus on melody and working hard on our live shows.”

“At one point, it was just like, ‘fucking hell – how many producers and how much madness are we going to have to go through to get this album done? It’s just fucking music, isn’t it?‘. I definitely had a lot of moments like that. I think we ended up in a good place, though. Eventually.”

"The scene is really healthy; we are all feeding off each other. Most of our music is tongue-in-cheek and never meant to be taken too seriously."

"There is a tension from yearning for that place of familiarity. Then of course we are parents now; we made the first album whilst I was pregnant, and inadvertently so, so it only informs on that in retrospect."